Google sees jump in Google+ membership

The search engine outfit is reporting a 58 percent jump in users since May.

Vic Gundotra, head of social notworking at Google, said Google+ has 300 million monthly active users, up from 190 million in May.

It is not just that they have signed up either, Google+ members who have interacted socially with any of Google’s services in the past 30 days total 540 million, up from 390 million in May, he added.

Google is also uploading 1.5 billion photos per week, and that number is increasing.

For years Google+ has been Facebook’s poor red-headed step sister. It entered the market in 2011 after social notworking was well established. Facebook has more than one billion monthly active users.

The key to developing the site is the fact that Google+ helps the search engine identify and authenticate users across all its services, including search, Gmail and YouTube.

This means that Google can target adverts at punters better. Quite why that would draw more users to the site appears to be the somewhat mixed up view of the Google marketers. After all, few people will go to Google+ because they get a more targeted advert.

However, Gundotra suggested a more plausible explanation – people like to share videos and pictures and Facebook’s method really is not up to snuff.